Posted on November 7, 2019

A Study of Pay at the Washington Post

Members of the Washington Post Newspaper Guild, Washington Post Newspaper Guild, November 6, 2019

Washington Post employees work hard every day to ensure that our company is a leader in the journalism industry. Members of our company’s union, The Washington Post Newspaper Guild, believe The Post should also lead the way in how it treats its staff.

(Download this report as a PDF)

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{snip} And the facts tell us that The Post has a problem with pay disparity.

The Post has never conducted and released to the public a comprehensive pay study of its own. So this year, Post Guild decided to do one itself.

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The result of those efforts is this new report — the most comprehensive study to date of pay at The Washington Post.

This is what we found.

IN THE NEWSROOM:

  • Women as a group are paid less than men.
  • Collectively, employees of color are paid less than white men, even when controlling for age and job description. White women are paid about the median for their age.
    • Women of color in the newsroom receive $30,000 less than white men — a gap of 35 percent when comparing median salaries.
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  • The Post tends to give merit raises based on performance evaluation scores, but those who score the highest are overwhelmingly white. The Post is fairly consistent across races/ethnicities and genders at awarding raises to those who do well on performance evaluations.
    • But in 85 percent of instances in which a 4 or higher was awarded to a salaried newsroom employee, that employee was white. Employees are rated on a scale of 1 to 5.
    • On the flip side, 37 percent of scores below 3 were given to employees of color in the newsroom (the newsroom is about 24 percent nonwhite).
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IN THE COMMERCIAL DIVISION:

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  • Pay disparities do exist, however, when analyzing for race or ethnicity. The median salary for white employees in commercial is $88,000, compared with $83,445 for people of color — a difference of $4,555, or 5 percent.
    • The disparity is even larger when adjusted for age, suggesting that employees of color in commercial are paid less than their white peers despite having more experience.

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{snip}The relative lack of diversity at The Post, particularly the relatively low numbers of black and Hispanic or Latino newsroom employees, also complicated our analysis because of the small sample sizes — but in itself demonstrates that the company must do better to recruit and retain a diverse staff.

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THE POST’S WORKFORCE

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To study employees by race and ethnicity, the Guild again relied on information provided by management, which means the provenance of the data was unclear. The information on race and ethnicity was combined into just one field, which prevented the Guild from separating the two for analysis. Not every employee has a race or ethnicity listed, but the vast majority do. Only 22 current employees, just over 2 percent, do not have this information listed in the database.

Of 950 current employees, the racial and ethnic breakdown is as follows:

  • White employees: 64.4 percent
  • Black employees: 16.5 percent
  • Asian employees: 8.1 percent
  • Hispanic or Latino employees: 4.7 percent
  • Employees with two or more races: 1.9 percent

For the 707 salaried employees, the racial and ethnic breakdown is as follows:

  • White employees: 71.4 percent
  • Black employees: 8.8 percent
  • Asian employees: 8.3 percent
  • Hispanic or Latino employees: 4.7 percent
  • Employees with two or more races: 2 percent

The median salary by race and ethnicity for those salaried employees is as follows:

  • White employees: $102,880
  • Black employees: $91,881
  • Asian employees: $90,780
  • Hispanic or Latino employees: $82,000
  • Employees with two or more races: $79,860

NEWSROOM

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In the newsroom, 71 percent of salaried Guild-eligible employees are white and 24 percent of employees are nonwhite. Below are the median salaries by race and ethnicity across the newsroom:

  • White: $106,212
  • Black: $97,276
  • Asian: $95,205
  • Hispanic or Latino: $82,890
  • Two or more races: $79,860

The total gap between white journalists in the newsroom and journalists of color is more than 15 percent, with a median salary of $106,212 for 406 white journalists and $92,080 for 139 journalists of color. Much like the gender gap, some of this could be explained by age and years of service: White journalists have a median age of 40 and journalists of color have a median age of 36.

But age doesn’t explain everything. Young employees of color across the newsroom don’t have complete parity with their young white colleagues. Among those under 40, newsroom employees of color make about 7 percent less than white journalists, with median salaries of $84,780 and $90,780, respectively. The disparity widens for journalists 40 and over: Newsroom employees of color have a median salary of $110,845, while their white colleagues have a median salary of $128,484 — a gap of nearly 16 percent.

About two-thirds of hourly employees in the newsroom are white, making this category more diverse than salaried workers. However, a racial pay gap still exists among hourly employees, with white hourly employees making a median wage of $33.59 an hour, compared to $30.07 for hourly employees of color. That gap of 11.7 percent is well outside the range that the Guild would consider parity in pay. When accounting for age, gaps still exist, though the analysis is difficult because there are only 30 hourly employees of color in the newsroom.

We would be remiss if this study did not examine gender, race and ethnicity through an intersectional lens. Across most industries, disparities increase when multiple factors are taken into account. Our analysis shows a similar pattern. The median salaries by group are as follows:

  • White men: $117,452
  • Men of color: $101,575
  • White women: $99,640
  • Women of color: $86,511

The gender pay gap is fairly similar across races and ethnicities. White men make about 18 percent more than white women, and men of color make 17 percent more than women of color across the newsroom. Likewise, racial pay gaps are similar across genders, with white men making about 16 percent more than men of color and white women making 15 percent more than women of color.

When comparing white men in the newsroom to women of color in the newsroom, the gap is over 35 percent, with the median salaries separated by more than $30,000. Here, again, some of this may be attributed to the fact that white men working at The Post have the oldest median age of any group across the newsroom. Median ages by group are as follows:

  • White men: 41
  • Men of color: 40
  • White women: 37
  • Women of color: 33

Controlling for age does, in fact, close the gap significantly between white men and men of color and also between white women and women of color. The gender gaps remain fairly consistent.

The Guild attempted to determine median salary by age group as a way to analyze pay by gender and race and ethnicity, and to determine which groups were paid above and below those benchmarks when age disparities were corrected. Controlling for age, here is how the median salaries for the four groups stack up:

  • White men are paid an average of 7.27 percent higher than the median for their age group
  • Men of color are paid an average of 1.73 percent lower than the median for their age group
  • White women are paid an average of 0.14 percent higher than the median for their age group
  • Women of color are paid an average of 3.26 percent lower than the median for their age group

Based on this analysis, The Post underpays men and women of color relative to white men. It pays white women about the median for their age.

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In general, we found the same pattern of disparities throughout the newsroom, but also discovered that desks with some of the highest median salaries — such as National, Financial and Investigative — also had higher percentages of white men. This suggests that The Post must do more to cultivate women and people of color for those desks that demand the highest levels of skill and experience and therefore command the highest salaries.

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Of 10 desks for which there were at least five white journalists and five journalists of color, seven desks have a median pay disparity favoring white journalists by at least 5 percent. Zero have a median pay disparity favoring journalists of color by at least 5 percent, and three have approximate pay equity between the two (within 5 percent).

There are only three desks that have at least five white men, five white women, five men of color and five women of color: National, Local and Design. All three have racial and gender pay disparities. Of those three desks, all have disparities in median salary of more than 30 percent between white men and women of color.

One prominent factor for these pay disparities is that the higher the median salary is for a desk, the higher its percentage of journalists who are male and the higher percentage of journalists who are white.

For desks in which the median salary is higher than $125,000, 80 percent of journalists are white and 57 percent of journalists are men. Those desks include National, Financial and Investigative. In this group, 47 percent of journalists are white men and 10 percent are women of color. For desks in which the median salary is below $92,000, 68 percent of journalists are white and 40 percent of journalists are men. In this group, 28 percent of journalists are white men and 21 percent are women of color.

In an equitable pay environment, one would expect that 50 percent of people in each group would be above the median salary and that 50 percent would be below. Controlling for age and median desk salary, the following represents how many employees are above the median expected salary:

  • White men: 57.6 percent
  • White women: 48.9 percent
  • Men of color: 41.2 percent
  • Women of color: 38.5 percent

The deviation from the median for each of these groups when controlling for age and median desk salary is as follows:

  • The median salaried white male employee makes $2,448 a year more than the expected median salary for their age and assignment
  • The median salaried white female employee makes $14 a year less than the expected median salary for their age and assignment
  • The median salaried male employee of color makes $407 a year less than the expected median salary for their age and assignment
  • The median salaried female employee of color makes $1,360 a year less than the expected median salary for their age and assignment

We recognize that these groups aren’t monoliths, and so in a normal distribution of pay, the Guild would expect about a third of employees to make within 5 percent of the median for their age and desk, about a third to make more than 5 percent below and about a third to make more than 5 percent above. Those distributions also show disparities among these groups.

  • White men: 32.4 percent of employees make more than 5 percent below the expected median salary and 48.1 percent make more than 5 percent above the expected median salary
  • White women: 38 percent of employees make more than 5 percent below the expected median salary and 35.3 percent make more than 5 percent above the expected median salary
  • Men of color: 41.2 percent of employees make more than 5 percent below the expected median salary and 29.4 percent make more than 5 percent above the expected median salary
  • Women of color: 46.2 percent of employees make more than 5 percent below the expected median salary and 25.6 percent make more than 5 percent above the expected median salary

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For men and women in the newsroom, the median performance evaluation score is even, at 3.4 for 3,664 evaluations conducted over four years. Analyzed by race and ethnicity, scores started to diverge. Among groups for whom more than 20 evaluations were done over the four years from 2015 through 2018, the median performance ratings were as follows:

  • White: 3.5
  • Asian: 3.4
  • Hispanic or Latino: 3.3
  • Black: 3.3
  • Two or more races: 3.2

For men, performance ratings were always at least equal to those of their female counterparts of the same race or ethnicity. Ratings for men and women by race and ethnicity were as follows:

  • White men: 3.5
  • White women: 3.4
  • Asian men and women: 3.4
  • Hispanic or Latino men and women: 3.3
  • Black men: 3.3
  • Black Women: 3.25
  • Men and women of two or more races: 3.2

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The percentages of merit raises distributed by race and ethnicity for salaried journalists are as follows:

  • White: 75.7 percent
  • Black: 9.3 percent
  • Asian: 8.3 percent
  • Hispanic or Latino: 3.6 percent
  • All others: 3.1 percent

For contrast, over that time the racial and ethnic makeup of salaried employees is as follows:

  • White: 70.1 percent
  • Black: 9.1 percent
  • Asian: 8.5 percent
  • Hispanic or Latino: 4.6 percent
  • All others: 7.7 percent

The Post contends that merit raises are tied mostly to performance evaluations, and the data bears that out. Those who score higher, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, tend to be the ones who get merit raises most frequently. However, an analysis of every performance evaluation score over the past four years shows that those who score the highest are overwhelmingly white. In cases in which a 4 or higher was awarded to a salaried newsroom employee, 85 percent were white, and over half of scores of 4 or higher were awarded to white men. And in cases in which salaried newsroom employees were given a score of 3 or below, 37 percent of those scores were given to employees of color (the newsroom is about 24 percent nonwhite).

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ADDITIONAL ANALYSIS

The analysis provided above is a fraction of the analysis completed as part of this pay study. If we had written it all up, this report would be much, much longer. The numbers in this report represent the most relevant topline numbers in the analysis, and all attempts were made to present those numbers alongside context including factors such as age and job.

The Post Guild’s full analysis is available on GitHub at https://github.com/postguild/paystudy2019.

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[Editor’s Note: The original story is quite long, with equal focus on racial disparities and sex disparities, and with a lot more figures along the lines included in this excerpt. There are also charts that may be of interest.]

Original Article